Everything We Know About Childish Gambino's Mysterious Pharos Album Event

Prior to a lone tweet published last Friday, Childish Gambino maintained radio silence. Some were beginning to wonder if his career had come to an end.

Save for leaked news of a Los Angeles studio session with choral singers, all available information pointed to the would-be truth that was tough to swallow: Donald Glover had sidelined his music persona to focus on Atlanta—the anticipated FX television series that debuts in September—and a burgeoning film career. Glover was reportedly cast for the next Spider-Man movie, which follows a short but strong performance in 2015’s The Martian.

Fortunately, the days of silence are numbered. That original tweet—a link to download a newly unveiled and free mobile app called Pharos—revealed a countdown and an unidentified something—UFO, asteroid, whatever else—that shot through space as the night sky shifted. An increasingly visible orb slowly came to resemble our home planet, and the significance of the countdown grew clear: prepare for impact. Heaving, metallic music soundtracked the journey; when sped up, the sounds became choral, a piece of a real Gambino record.

After spiraling through the earth’s atmosphere, app users touched down in Joshua Tree, California to receive an announcement: a new album in September (Glover’s poised for a major fourth quarter across the board) and a hyper-exclusive live experience to boot. Campgrounds, concerts, you name it.

More information about the event surfaced this morning when the $99 tickets were made available for pre-sale. The multitalented star sweetened the deal by tweeting that this mysterious string of performances would go down as his only shows of the year.

Digital guidebooks were distributed to those who purchased tickets through the app. A twelve-slide scroll screen consists of existential questions (“Why are we here?”), advocacy for pantheism, ground rules for the gathering (“No irony”), manifestos about the human condition in the internet age, and some stunning imagery. One illustration is reminiscent of the custom-mountain Kanye West had constructed for his 2013 Yeezus tour.

Although any attempt to decipher “Pharos” is conjecture, we have some ideas. In addition to its phonetic resemblance to pharaoh, an ancient Egyptian ruler, the word is nearly identical to Pharo, a coding language. In Glover’s 2014 cover story with Complex, he praised coders and even compared them to gods: “I don’t want young black kids to aspire to be rappers or ballers. Even lawyers and doctors—those are service positions. I want them to be coders. They can make their own worlds then. They don’t need anybody else. I love hearing those kids’ ideas, all these kids on the Internet. The excitement of making something, that’s the spark of God.”

Reddit users picked apart Glover’s app and discovered a file left for them to discover: “Hello hacker”

Perhaps the most curious piece of this expanding puzzle is the following phrase: “The vibration code name for this Pharos is…” The implication here is that Pharos isn’t singular. There are multiple Pharos, presumably each person (or phone) who attends the event. There is also a currently unclickable link to purchase merch. Glover is reportedly in the process of trademarking Pharos.

After the initial Friday and Saturday segments sold out in a matter of minutes, Glover added late-night showings that are currently available. The same option will likely occur after the original Sunday posting sells out.